When a court sets standards of due care in a tort or contract case with a view to how the standards will affect future behavior of parties similar to the litigants, it should sometimes realize that only one of the two future parties is likely to become informed of the standards. The standards can then only have a direct effect on the behavior of the informed party, and it may be thought that the court should hold the informed party strictly liable, which maximizes this effect. However, this ignores that the informed party may, although strictly liable, lower her level of care in order to induce the uninformed party to take greater care. In this situation, the negligence rule may do better than strict liability, since the discontinuity of the negligence rule can prevent the informed party from strategically lowering her level of care. Under the negligence rule, optimal standards are sensitive to whether the informed party acts first and to whether she is the injurer or the victim. For both the informed and the uninformed, there are circumstances in which the standard should be higher than first best and other circumstances where it should be lower.

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In most countries labor is organzed in cooperating skill-speci c unions rather than in industrial unions or separately bargaining skill-speci c unions. Within an extremely simple model of a small open economy facing imperfect competition we show that this way of organizing labor can be explained as the outcome of rational (optimizing) behavior on the part of the unions and the employers. Organizing labor in local industrial cartels (regardless of skill) or a single economy wide cartel results in a real wage level that is inappropriately low both from the point of view of labor and the society as a whole unless labor has close to monopoly power in the wage setting process. Organizing labor in local or economy wide skill-speci c unions may result in a wage level that is too high. In addition, a labor market organized in non-cooperating unions is likely to be unstable. This dilemma calls for a compromise: A cartel of cooperating, independent skill-speci c unions. The degree and the form of the cooperation depend inter alia on the bargaining power of the employer, the number of skills and competing rms and the rigidity with which the unions enforce lines of demarcations.

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In this paper, we introduce two new six-parameter processes based on time-changing
tempered stable distributions and develop an option pricing model based on these processes.
This model provides a good t to observed option prices. To demonstrate the
advantages of the new processes, we conduct two empirical studies to compare their performance
to other processes that have been used in the literature.

Symphonic orchestras—“a mélange of musicians, volunteers, and paid staff whose contributions must be closely coordinated” (Allmendinger, Hackman, & Lehman, 1996: 194)—have been of growing interest for scholars of organization for their creative and collaborative performance through projects and their work under pressure. While their resemblance with bureaucratic and professional service organizations has been acknowledged, they have been found also akin to coordinated internal networks of multiple identities (Glynn, 2000; Karmowska & Child, 2014). However, scholars have depicted orchestras as rather established and hierarchical creative organizations that are bound by conventions and are dedicated to the pursuit of ‘superior performance’, as the opening quote suggests. As a consequence, they have paid less attention to their learning potential. Studies of other kinds of collaborative collectives, such as teams in management and education, have demonstrated interesting tensions between learning and performing (Bunderson & Suttcliffe, 2003; Paunova & Lee, 2016).

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This thesis is about innovation and power. Human nature has always been
expressed by our capacity to innovate and adapt to almost any environment
(Bowlby, 1962; Giddens, 1991). In the 20th century, the primary function of
business organisations was to invent, produce and commercialise their products
and services in different markets. As a matter of fact, business organisations in
the last century proved to be the best way of disseminating innovation (Schön,
1971). Currently in the 21st century, there is a call to better understand how new
ideas, technology and sources of knowledge are managed, based on the premise
that novelty can unfold anywhere and that innovation cannot be considered a
linear process consisting of a chain of activities.

When experts with diverse training and experiential backgrounds come together to make binding
decisions they face the challenge of finding common ground in the absence of any particular shared
abstract body of knowledge or organization specific set of evaluative principles. How does
consensus emerge in situations marked by contentious friction? Network theory suggests that
connectivity enables orchestration of alignment and coordination across difference. Occupants of
strategically central positions in networks can thus be formally identified from the structural
characteristics of those positions (White et al. 1976; Burt 1992, 2010; Vedres and Stark 2010). But
the formal characteristics of positions only tell us about the potential advantage of occupants.
Actual advantage is about mobilizing action from network positions to influence what goes on in
the network (Burt 2010, 223ff). What does it take for occupants of advantageous position to take
action on specific collective problems in the face of contentious situations?

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Organisations are crucial elements in an innovation system. Yet, their role is so ubiquitous that it is difficult to grasp and to examine from the perspective of public policy. Besides, links between the literature at firm and system levels on the one hand, and public policy and governance studies on the other, are still scarce. The purpose of this paper is to define the conceptual background of innovation policy in relation to the role of organisations in general, and entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in particular. In so doing, this paper aims at making three contributions. Firstly, it distinguishes between different types of organisations in the innovation system, a crucial topic in understanding innovation dynamics and blurring borders. Secondly, it identifies the organisation-related bottlenecks in the innovation system, and examines the policy instruments to solve them. Thirdly, it discusses the limits of public policy and suggests introducing a wider governance approach.

The paper analyses the organization of the new product development process at FIAT from a
resource-based perspective. The focus is on organizational resources for integrating dispersed
specialist knowledge required in the development of complex products. The analysis shows
how the application of a resource-based perspective is able to uncover negative long-term
effects of outsourcing on the knowledge base (hollowing out), despite beneficial short-term
effects on cost.

Inter-organizational collaboration is an organizational form that is used by an increasing number of firms to meet a wide range of organizational aims (Hagedoorn 1996; 2002; Narula, 2004; Casson and Mol, 2006). Inter-organizational alliances are a preferred way of sourcing a variety of resources (Eisenhardt and Shonhoven, 1996; Gulati, 1999; Van de Ven and Walker, 1998), and a prominent view of the strategic alliance literature suggests that inter-firm collaboration has a special strength in serving as a mechanism by which a firm can leverage its skills, acquire new competencies, and learn (e.g. Kogut, 1989; Hamel, Doz, and Prahalad, 1989; Huber, 1991; Larsson, Bengtsson, Henriksson, and Sparks, 1998; Lyles, 1988; Powell and Brantley, 1992; Inkpen and Tsang, 2008). As firms collaborate at an increasing rate (Khanna et al, 1998) it becomes still more important to understand how these firms can be instrumental in organizing and governing the various collaborative knowledge processes that take place in alliances.

This paper explores how two Danish rehabilitation organizations textual guidelines for assessment of clients’ personality traits influence the actual evaluation of clients. The analysis will show how staff members produce institutional identities corresponding to organizational categories, which very often have little or no relevance for the clients evaluated. The goal of the article is to demonstrate how the institutional complex that frames the work of the organizations produces the client types pertaining to that organization. By applying the analytical strategy of institutional ethnography I elucidate how the two rehabilitation organizations local history, legislation, structural features of the present labour market and of social work result in a number of contradictions which make it difficult to deliver client-centred care. This exact goal is according to the staff one of the most important goals for ‘good’ social work.

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A Revision of Hofstede's Theory of Industrialization Supported by Cases from Latin America, Africa and Germany in the 19th century

Kragh, Simon Ulrik(Frederiksberg, 2014)

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Drawing on a revised version ofHofstede's theory ofindustrialization and cultural change contained in his explanation of individualism and collectivism, the paper proposes that countries which are in the earlier stages of industrialization have a common culture that governs organizational behaviours. In-group/out-group particularist values that have been handed over from preindustrial society tend to overlay and replace impersonal and universalistic bureaucracies and market exchange typical ofindustrial society. The paper shows how these values shape the culture of organizations in Latin America, Africa and Germany around 1850.

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Offshoring can be defined as the relocation of organizational tasks and services to foreign
locations. Increasingly, firms experience that unforeseen costs and difficulties of managing
offshoring undercut anticipated benefits; that unexpected challenges of offshoring jeopardize and
eventually undermine initial objectives. Guided by the research question—what are the
organizational consequences of offshoring?—the purpose of this thesis is to investigate why
some firms fail when offshoring and other do not.
The thesis consists of four research papers using various datasets and methodologies that
investigate offshoring in an organizational context. The first paper investigates how the
complexity of offshoring leads to ‘hidden costs’ of implementing offshoring activities. The
second paper looks at how these hidden reconfiguration costs influence the process performance
of the offshored activity and how this relationship is moderated by the modularity of that
activity. The third paper investigates the effect of the organizational reconfiguration of
offshoring on firms’ strategies. The final paper studies different strategies of adaptation in
offshoring.
Taken together, this thesis argues that whether firms relocate activities with the purpose
of accessing resources or as a response to political pressures, the process of offshoring presents
firms with the challenge of coordinating and integrating offshoring activities in a global
organization. The complexities and uncertainties of an organization consisting of a number of
offshored activities (in contrast to an organization with only co-located activities) require firms
to invest additional resources in coordination mechanisms so that an efficient reintegration can
be achieved.

For decades, the literatures on firm capabilities and organizational economics have been at odds with each other, specifically relative to explaining organizational boundaries and heterogeneity. We briefly trace the history of the relationship between the capabilities literature and organizational economics and point to the dominance of a “capabilities first” logic in this relationship. We argue that capabilities considerations are inherently intertwined with questions about organizational boundaries and internal organization, and use this point to respond to the prevalent “capabilities first” logic. We offer an integrative research agenda that focuses, first, on the governance of capabilities and, second, on the capability of governance.

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This chapter reviews and discusses rational-choice approaches to organizational governance. These approaches are found primarily in organizational economics (virtually no rational-choice organizational sociology exists), particularly in transaction cost economics, principal-agent theory, and the incomplete-contracts or property-rights approach. We distill the main unifying characteristics of these streams, survey each stream, and offer some critical commentary and suggestions for moving forward.

This empirical study addresses the question of how foreign market unfamiliarity of entrant firms develops post-entry. Three different predictions of post-entry change of foreign market unfamiliarity are derived from the literature on firms’ internationalization process. The predictions are made subject to empirical examination using a set of primary data of current (i.e. at the point in time of mail interviews) foreign operation business operations reported by managers of Danish international firms. The empirical study gives insight to the incidence and character of the so-called ‘shock effect’ in relation to foreign market entry: the phenomenon of entrant firms’ inclination to underestimate differences between the home and host country in terms of the business environment. The data support the supposition that entrant firms in general are exposed to a ‘shock effect’. On average, the foreign market unfamiliarity as perceived by the entrant firms peaks seven years after entry. The company data indicate that entrant firms in general experience the shock effect in relation to entry of adjacent, rather than distant, countries. Hence, the ‘psychic distance paradox’ hypothesis is supported. Also, the data suggest that the shock effect befalls producers of customized products, but not producers of standardized products, and furthermore, entrant firms in general experience the shock effect in relation to acquisition of tacit rather than explicit knowledge. Key words: Internationalization process of firms, liability of foreignness, learning, shock effect.